By Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't working on computers and scanners, he's spending time with his wife and kids, or...

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

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I don't want to ban contraceptives, but I shouldn't have to buy them for you.

This author It's About Freedom

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

I don't want to ban contraceptives, but I shouldn't have to buy them for you.

This author It's About Freedom

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

I don't want to ban contraceptives, but I shouldn't have to buy them for you.

This author It's About Freedom

Bishops
The Catholic church does not believe it should have to cover costs of contraception for its employees, citing the First Amendment right of freedom of religion. Whether or not that freedom allows Catholic churches to deny contraceptive coverage to those employees who do want it is a hotly debated subject. | Contraceptives, Religion In Politics, Catholic Church,

The Contraception Debate Isn't About Contraceptives
Published on February 24, 2012

The debate over contraception is getting out of hand. What started out as a stupid question from a leftist media figure during a primary debate has warped into a national conversation filled with ridiculous innuendo, baseless assumptions, and outright lies.

On January 7, George Stephanopoulos threw out an oddball question during a GOP primary debate: "Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?"

Quite an odd question, considering the banning of contraceptives was on no one's mind at the time. The question was so out of place that Dick Morris has even theorized that the question was planted by the Obama administration...an assertion that isn't so far-fetched, considering the events that followed.

Not long after Stephanopoulos threw out his out-of-place query, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that, under authority from the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), they were mandating that all employers must provide coverage for contraceptives to their employees.

The requirement was absurd on its face, and if anything, just goes to show what a travesty Obamacare truly is. Had the bill included the contraceptive mandate up front, it never would have passed. I guess this is what Nancy Pelosi meant when she said we have to "pass the bill to find out what is in it."

In what the Left would call an act of contrition and the rest of the world would call a bunch of boloney, the White House then announced a "compromise": Employers would not be forced to provide no-cost contraceptives to their employees. Instead, insurance companies would be forced to provide contraceptives at no cost...except, that is, the cost of even higher insurance rates. Of course, what the White House called a "compromise" took place with absolutely no input from anyone who disagreed with the mandate. Instead, the Obama Administration changed their mandate just barely enough so that they could still get their way while only kind of violating the First Amendment, instead of directly butting heads with the Constitution our president so despises.

By authorizing the contraceptive mandate, the Obama administration is doing two things: attacking the First Amendment rights of religious Americans, and bringing a completely contrived issue to the forefront of presidential politics in an election year. They're laying on the lies pretty thick: Even though none of the GOP presidential candidates has ever suggested, or even hinted at banning contraceptive use, the allegations are being repeated over and over by the Left. A survey has alleged that 98 percent of Catholic women use contraceptives--a false statistic that was even repeated by Minority Leader Pelosi. Truth is, the study that originated this statistic used a horribly skewed sampling and isn't worth repeating.

No one wants to ban contraceptives--and despite Pelosi's recent inane, illogical argument to the contrary, it really doesn't matter how many Catholic women use contraception, that doesn't give the government the right to force religious people or organizations to provide contraceptives to their employees.

But for those on the Left, all it takes is the perception that something may be a "right," and all of a sudden it is something the government must ensure people can get for free. The way liberals talk about contraceptives these days, you would think they were talking about cancer drugs...just like when the Susan G. Komen charity made the decision not to donate money to the scandal-ridden Planned Parenthood. For decades, Planned Parenthood has existed for two primary purposes: to distribute contraceptives and perform abortions...but because breast exams are one of the few secondary services Planned Parenthood provides, the Left went ballistic. Suddenly, the nation's number-one provider of abortions was a "women's health organization." It takes a special kind of callous disregard for human life to write off an unborn child as something that can be disposed of without a second thought--and then the same people who defend the "right" to murder the unborn paint those who would defend that life as "extreme." The true extremists are people like President Obama, who, as a US Senator, voted against legislation that would make it illegal for abortion doctors to kill babies who were born during the course of failed abortions.

When it gets down to it, abortion is the only area where the Left is pro-choice. They will regulate every other aspect of our lives, from our lightbulbs to the cars that we drive to everything else they can possibly regulate...and then they turn around and start fear-mongering over an issue that no one cared about until they started pushing the American public around. Let's face it: contraceptive use is a personal choice. There is no logical reason for Health and Human Services to mandate that contraceptives be provided at no cost. Despite how the Left prattles on, this issue is not about "women's health," it is about protecting the freedom of the American people. And the truth is, this battle should not just be fought over the contraception mandate--this mandate is just one in a long line of mandates and regulations that have us slowly and steadily falling into a dictatorial system of government. We have a president who has voiced open opposition to the Constitution of the United States, in violation of his Oath of Office. At every turn, he makes moves to restrict our freedoms, always supposedly doing so for our own good.

Why is contraception so important that people need free access to it? There is no convincing case to be made in support of this mandate, other than that President Obama wanted to use the mandate to try and take the focus of the presidential election off of his economic failures so that he could paint the GOP candidates as religious extremists. Personally, I don't care whether or not people use contraceptives, and I don't like the idea that I will end up paying for other people's contraception in the form of higher insurance rates, but the bottom line is, I believe in the Catholic Church's right not to be forced into providing contraception to people in direct violation of their religious beliefs.

No one wants to ban contraceptives. But just because I don't want to ban them, that does not mean I have to buy them for you.

It's About Freedom: Details

"It's About Freedom" was first released on 2.24.2012 and last updated on 10.17.2018 6:47 AM EDT.
Robert Cleveland submitted this feature to AND Magazine.
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